Wall Street Journal - The Year Video Games Became Art.2012 was an important year for video games. Prime examples of the form were curated for the first time by museums such as the Smithsonian, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Museum of Modern Art—with the MoMA even going so far as to add video games to its permanent collection. This is not to say that videogames were not art beforehand, or even to accept that “art” is the best term to use in describing video games. Video games are still, on some level, “ones and zeroes.” And they always will be. But it’s nonetheless culturally significant that a curator from an institution as hallowed as the MoMA finally said that they are also “ones and zeroes that get to form whole spatial structures and whole experiences.”

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Some games are an overtly artistic statement (Journey), others are more similar to a good theater production (Planescape:Torment). Still others are an escape into imagination and other worlds, similar to a novel (Morrowind). I think all of the above qualify as art.

Does a cheap action movie or bodice-ripper novel qualify as art? How about a derivative FPS or Leisure Suit Larry? Ducks on velvet or caricature bought from an artist on the street? All creative endevors can produce works that qualify as great art. All can just as easily churn out complete rubbish. It's all relative.